


The stars are in your eyes

by WatermelonTuesdays



Series: Finding Family [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Keith (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Keith is a wild child, M/M, Not at the moment anyways, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Pre-Keith/Shiro (Voltron), Pre-Kerberos Mission, Shiro ain't dead guys, Shiro needs some support, Tagged for character death just because it goes into "pilot error" territory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 09:25:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16930644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatermelonTuesdays/pseuds/WatermelonTuesdays
Summary: It's the day before Shiro goes on the kerberos mission and Keith surprises Shiro with a mini-celebration and some much needed support.-------“You’re not leaving us behind. You’re just going on ahead. You’ll be back this time next year, just you watch.”Shiro smiled up at the sky because there was no sunset left. His eyes sought out the first stars of the evening and Keith did the same.“We shouldn’t stay too late. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”Keith spun to Shiro then. “We?”Shiro nodded. “I’ve got a, uh, visitor pass. You can come up to the launch pad to say goodbye, and then watch from the shelter. It was supposed to be for, you know, Adam…”





	The stars are in your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! 
> 
> So I had this idea for a set of fics that kind of deal with some of what happened in season 7, and this is the first of them. The plan is to publish one every day until season 8. I have them all written except for the last one and this is the first time I'm starting a series without having the whole hing written, so wish me luck!! 
> 
> Most of these aren't going to be heavy on the Sheith content, but that's obviously the end goal. Let's be real here.

It was, all told, a rough week. Every teacher in the garrison had yelled at Keith at least once about being distracted in class, and he had had several run-ins with Iverson. Nothing was going particularly right for him.

He was even caught trying to sneak extra pudding cups out of the mess hall by the stern old man with the limp who scooped the mashed potatoes. He narrowly avoided that lecture by tossing the pudding cups over his shoulder and racing off into the evening light.

He didn’t slow until he reached the officers barracks and skirted the large building unobtrusively. 

He scaled the fire escape like a monkey and at the fifth floor he twisted his body over the railing to shimmy along the thin ledge, his fingers gripped tight against the large stones of the barracks wall. It was only 2 window sills to the left before he could reach across the gap and tap quickly on Shiro’s window. 

He tapped three times and waited for Shiro’s head to pop out the small sliding window.

“Keith?” 

Keith watched Shiro swallow back his satisfaction at seeing his young friend, and replace it with a scolding look.

“I told you to stop doing that, you’re going to get yourself killed.” 

Keith shrugged. “Meet me on the roof?”

Shiro considered for a moment before he accepted, pulling back into his room and sliding the window shut behind him.

Keith was already well-situated on the roof when Shiro arrived, nudging a stray brick into place at the door so as not to get locked out. He knew Keith could always run down and let him in if necessary, but he hated watching the boy scale down the meter and a half drop to the fire escape.

It was a safety hazard, is what it was, starting the escape so far down from the roof. Shiro didn’t like to think about it much. Of course, no one was supposed to be up here, so he’d never had the opportunity to report it. 

Shiro settled himself down against the warm brick of an ancient chimney next to Keith. They were facing the sunset, and they watched the colours drift and blur across the sky as the sun dipped below the distant horizon. 

Wordlessly, Keith pulled two small berry tarts out of his pocket, still warm from the heat lamps of the mess hall. He passed one to Shiro, who ate it without commenting that food is not allowed outside of the hall. 

Normally he would, but tonight he didn’t. Because tonight was special.

“Are you excited?”

Shiro finished his bite before he answered. “A bit.”

“Well, you should be. You worked so hard.”

“Yeah.” It was a soft agreement, like Shiro wasn’t sure the price was worth the reward. 

Keith didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t have the first inkling of what Shiro had been going through the last few weeks, but when he thought about what he’d like, if he were in Shiro’s shoes, he would want to be reminded that he made the right choice.

“What’s space like?”

Shiro looked at him like he’d been roused from a doze, then smiled wistfully.

“It’s hard to describe. The simulators don’t do it justice. The weightlessness is incredible. And the view! It’s like lying flat on your back, in the middle of the dessert, on the clearest night of the year. But there’s even more of it. And it’s all around you. It’s… nothing compares to it.”

Keith smiled at the awe in Shiro’s voice as he spoke, like he could see it all in front of him.

“I wish I could come.”

“You’ll go up there someday,” Shiro’s certainty made Keith warm all the way down to his spine. 

It was so good to be believed in.

“We’ll go up together.” Keith did his best to mimic Shiro’s sure tone.

“Well…”

A previous conversation, weeks old now, hung between them for a moment. ‘Only a few years left at peak condition.’

Keith shrugged. “You’re only gone a year. I’ll be ready by then, and we can go up on the next mission.”

Shiro laughed at the bravado, though for all he knew it could be true: Keith definitely had the talent.

Silence settled around them the way darkness settled around the shrinking sun. It was companionable, neither of them were known for being chatty.

Keith would likely have a hell of a time in a year without his best friend and mentor. He would have to behave himself better, for one thing. No more Shiro to help pick him up and get him out of scrapes. And it would be lonely around the garrison without Shiro. Doubly so, now that Keith was too uncomfortable around Adam to do more than salute with a “yes, sir.” 

He didn’t understand everything about the break up, but he knew enough to know he was irreversibly on Shiro’s side of it. 

Yes, the loneliness was going to hurt, but no more than it always had. Less, actually, because Shiro would come back. It was only a year, and what was a year? 

“There’s a feeling,” Shiro said, as if he were continuing an ongoing conversation, “when you’re leaving Earth’s atmosphere, and the gravity is trying its best to put you back on solid ground, like you’re leaving everything behind. Like the g-forces are taking a part of you to keep on Earth…”

“You’re not leaving us behind. You’re just going on ahead. You’ll be back this time next year, just you watch.”

Shiro smiled up at the sky because there was no sunset left. His eyes sought out the first stars of the evening and Keith did the same. 

“We shouldn’t stay too late. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Keith spun to Shiro then. “We?”

Shiro nodded. “I’ve got a, uh, visitor pass. You can come up to the launch pad to say goodbye, and then watch from the shelter. It was supposed to be for, you know, Adam…”

Keith nodded lamely, torn between his excitement at being able to see the launch so close and his sadness in the face of Shiro’s broken heart. 

Not long after, Shiro held the door to the service stairs open for Keith, insisting that he not try and kill himself on the rickety fire escape. 

“I’ll see you at 06:00 hours, cadet,” he said when they reached the doors of the barracks, his face cracked into a smile, “so get some sleep.” He tussled Keith’s hair then turned inside.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Keith’s eyes were bright as he watched everyone preparing for launch. The launch shelter was a fair-sized building that was full of people on screens, monitoring everything you could possibly think to monitor. Keith’s excited heart rate was probably ticking away on one of those screens. 

He could see the groups of officers and scientists outside through the large plexiglass windows. They were loading, hoisting, checking, double-checking: everything. They were all deeply focused on their tasks, though they moved with a kind of reserved excitement that made the whole area seem abuzz. Or maybe that was just Keith’s racing heart again.

He turned to Shiro with a wide grin, but Shiro was in an open corner of the room where the families and “visitors” were supposed to sit and wait and say their goodbyes. There was a whole family there, standing around the low-backed and uncomfortable garrison chairs. They were all talking, and smiling with tears in their eyes, and hugging. Repeatedly hugging. 

Keith barely even registered them, except to dimly recognize they must be the Holts. 

He turned back to the busy tarmac, drinking in the preparations. 

Shiro joined him by the window a minute later. “Pretty good, isn’t it?”

“It’s amazing!” Keith’s eyes were shining when he looked up at Shiro, his grin so wide it hurt. “This is so cool, Shiro. Thank you for letting me come.”

“Of course, Keith.” His heavy hand settled on Keith’s shoulder, adding warmth to the young boy’s excitement.

There was a signal from someone at one of the monitors, a waving motion that Keith only caught from the corner of his eye.

Shiro saw the movement and nodded at the officer. “It’s time for me to go in.”

Keith’s voice grew suddenly serious, and he spoke quietly so that no one but Shiro could hear him. “I’m glad you’re doing this, Shiro. You’re living the dream.”

Shiro was speechless, and his jaw hung loose for a brief moment before settling into a determined look. 

“I’ll see you in a year. And next time, it’ll be the both of us going, right?”

Keith nodded sharply, then pulled Shiro into a fast, but tight, hug. 

“I’ll see you soon.”

Keith’s expression glowed with pride as he watched Shiro, Matt, and Sam walk down the tarmac and into their shuttle. 

It took another 40 minutes before they were ready to launch. And then in the blink of an eye, and clouded in the burning smell of jet fuel, they were gone. Off to the stars.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Keith was quiet when he left the mission control. He had stayed there for a long time after they had broken through the Earth’s atmosphere. They were well on their way to Kerberos by the time he padded silently out of the room. 

His steps were slow as he headed back to his dorm room, his mind contemplative. Now that Shiro was gone, it was time to start thinking about the year to come. He would have to both smarten up and buckle down if he wanted to be ready to join Shiro in time for the next mission. Neither were things he was particularly good at. 

Maybe if he found a way to let off steam? 

Shiro had always told him it was important to do. They sparred regularly in the gym to burn off Keith’s excess energy and pent up aggression from the strict rules of garrison life. He should spar even more frequently now, practice with fists and with his blade. 

How else could he let off steam?

Keith stopped as it hit him. He took off in the opposite direction a moment later, moving faster with each step until he was running full-tilt towards the old storage shed that housed his father’s hoverbike. 

The bike roared to life like it was waiting for him. 

Keith took off to fast he kicked up dust and sand in a small cyclone at the shed doors.

“Hey! Cadet!” an unknown officer cried after him, but Keith was already at the edge of the compound and hooting wildly at his sudden freedom. 

He sped along the desert floor as if he were racing Shiro, and then leaned down, pressing himself into a more aerodynamic shape, and gunning it even faster. He arched over a dune like he was flying, then steered towards some distant cliffs where he could twist and dodge around the large and imposing boulders he knew lay there. 

Keith flew with reckless abandon. The desert was his playground, and he knew it well enough that he was more than comfortable with his breakneck pace. 

He knew the canyon was coming before he spotted it, and he eased himself off the throttle in his approach. He waited until the deep drop of the cliff was in sight before he revved his engines and careened forward. 

He was still increasing his speed as he launched in a perfect arc over the edge.

For a fraction of a second, Keith was weightless. Then he was all too heavy and free-falling back to Earth. 

He felt the moment to gun his engines in his bones. Waiting and waiting and waiting until it was the right moment to let loose. He punched it at just the right moment to swing up and lift himself up and away from the fast-advancing ground. 

He pulled out of the dive with a howling laugh and sped off into the shifting sands. 

~*~*~*~*~*~

Keith was sitting in class when they heard the news. 

It was Adam’s class, and they had pulled him out 20 minutes earlier under the pretense of an urgent phone call. They didn’t bother to pull Keith out of class, or give him any advance notice. They pulled the whole academy into the gymnasium to sit them on the floor and the hard bleachers, and told them that the Kerberos team had encountered complications due to pilot error and had lost all contact with mission control. The exact nature of the pilot error was uncertain (or classified: many of the cadets knew to read between the lines) as was the fate of the crew. There had been no communication or signs of life for over 48 hours, and they were presumed to be dead.

The wind was knocked out of Keith’s chest. From the moment the words “pillow error” left Iverson’s lips, he heard nothing else. 

The words cut him, shocked him, tortured him. 

Was Shiro not coming back?

He almost began to hyperventilate then and there, crushed between the sweaty teenage bodies of his classmates in the echoing silence of the filled gym. 

But Keith’s mind was working faster than his body. Before he sank and drowned in his panic, he began to question Iverson’s words.

Pilot error?

Shiro made no pilot error. It wasn’t possible. 

Any infinite number of things could have gone wrong out in the depths of space. Asteroids, solar flares, computer malfunction, floating debris: anything. The only thing that was not possible? Pilot error. 

Not with Shiro at the helm.

And 48 hours without communication? If it was a pilot error, wouldn’t they have known the crew’s fate immediately? 

The ship had a black box – and even more than that, it was filled to the brim with billions of dollars of sophisticated tech that sent constant reports and relays back to mission control for analysis. If a screw was loose, mission control would know.

Something didn’t add up.

Keith obsessed over the accident, and the garrison’s official statement, for the next week. He poured over news reports from around the globe, searching for a clue, some ill-fitting piece of information or slip of the tongue that would give him the answers he needed. 

Pilot error? How dare they blame Shiro! How dare they suggest he was anything less than perfect!

How dare they pin this on his disease!

Keith hardly slept, and each hour awake only fueled his burning rage. 

At the end of the second week, Keith relinquished all fucks previously given. He stalked Iverson, hoping to hear something new.

And hear something he did.

Something terrible.

Something so inhumane it pulled Keith out of his crouch with lightning speed, his fist careening to Iverson’s face before he even registered what he was doing.

Iverson had been speaking, of all people, to Adam. They were heading to Iverson’s office to have a private conversation; Adam had so many questions, and despite the fact that they had broken up over a month before Shiro even left, the garrison still afforded him the rights of the bereft partner. 

“The-they keep saying pilot error,” Adam’s voice shook as he tried to keep his voice quiet, “does that mean..?” He couldn’t finish the sentence. 

It was Adam’s nightmare, Keith was sure, that he would be right.

“Yes,” Iverson confirmed, “we think so. Admiral Sanda was against him going up in his condition. It was only a matter of time. It appears-” 

Adam never learned what appeared because at that moment Keith’s knuckle met full-force with Iverson’s face, and the hallways erupted into chaos. 

Adam pulled Keith off Iverson before the commander could gather enough wits to retaliate. Keith pulled free from Adam’s grasp, resisting the urge to punch him in his rage. He knew Shiro wouldn’t like that. And he was suddenly determined that he would find Shiro, if he had to build his own rocket to do it.

Keith stalked off with fists clenched. He felt the power of his determination race through his body, aided by the cool course of adrenaline in his veins. They could do what they liked – discharge him for all he cared – it didn’t matter. 

All that mattered was finding Shiro.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I think this is the first fic I've written that actually deals with Adam/Shiro at all, and I definitely feel the same way Keith does here. I don't know enough to form a real opinion, but I'm behind Shiro 100%!
> 
> If you liked it, drop me a kudos or a comment (or both!) because they sustain me.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr still, though that might change out of solidarity for the artists, I'm still making up my mind on that one. But I did finally break down and get a twitter, so there's that!
> 
> Tumblr: WatermelonTuesdays  
> Twitter: WTuesdays (I am like, 95% sure that's my name... I don't fully understand twitter yet lol)


End file.
